RE: Future version of HTML!?

On Sat, 23 Oct 1999, Nir Dagan wrote:

> With all due respect to Mr. O'Connor, it would be more constructive 
> if his remarks were more focussed.

True, my comments did diverge from my point.  Although I disagree with the
new directions the W3C is following, that is tangent to the point I was
trying to make. 

So my claim is that the W3C isn't an authoratiative source on the HTML
specification since they appointed themselves.  This doesn't preclude them
being an authrative source.  They seem to claim to have backing of major
UA vendors.  However their UA vendors don't follow their own specs.  So
since no one is really following their standards (especially in the UA
department), and they appointed themselve how could anyone really consider
their standards authorative?

I claim that the ISO with ISO-HTML is authorative since the ISO is an
internationally recognised standards body, as opposed to a group of
companies that vaguely get together.  And although even fewer UA claim to
implement ISO-HTML, they are least not a self-appointed.

I also am not dismissing the value of the HTML 4.0 specs.  They indeed are
a normative reference in ISO-HTML.  The correlation between valuable
standards and authorative standards is often dubious.

-- 
Russell O'Connor                           roconnor@uwaterloo.ca
       <http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~roconnor/>
``And truth irreversibly destroys the meaning of its own message''
-- Anindita Dutta, ``The Paradox of Truth, the Truth of Entropy''

Received on Saturday, 23 October 1999 12:25:23 UTC